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JDR. HENRY'S OR^TIOIsT. 



PATRIOTISM 



SLAVEHOLDERS' REBELLION. 






34-7 



PATRIOTISM 



AND 



THE SUVEHOLUERS' REBELLION. 



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By 0. S. HE NET 







NEW rOEK: 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 

443 & 445 BROADWAY. 

LONDON: 16 LITTLE BRITAIN. 

1881. 




^W5 



THE HON. HAMILTON FISH. 



My Deak Sir: 

The following discourse was delivered some weeks ago, on tlie anni- 
versary of an Academic Association ; and more recently (except the in- 
troductory pages) on another occasion. You and other gentlemen who 
heard it have thought its circulation may do good. 

I inscribe it to you, because it is chiefly owing to you that it is pub- 
lished, and also because I am glad of an opportunity of testifying to the 
respect and regard which your character and public life have gained from 
all honest men and true patriots. 

Very truly and heartily yours, 

C. S. Henet. 

Nbwbceoh, Sept. 28, 1861 



ORATION. 



Mr. Peesident and Gentlemen of the Alumni 
Association : 

We have come liere to-day to shake hands with each 
other as brothers, to look at our Fair Mother's face, to 
pay her our filial duty, to consult for her honor and 
her good. But who would have thought, at our last 
meeting, three years ago, that before the next our coun- 
try would be plunged in a Civil War — a war waged by 
parricidal hands for the overthrow of the Constitution, 
the destruction of our national existence, and the extinc- 
tion of the dearest hopes of the human race. But such 
is the /act; and all along the different roads by which 
we have come to these academic seats, — at every town 
and village through which we have passed, every ham- 
let, nook and station house, we have met with sights 
and sounds to remind us of the fact. The tokens of it 
are around us here to-day — in the flags and colors of 
the Union hung round these walls. It is the fact that 
is uppermost in all minds and on all tongues when men 
meet together. I cannot if I would (nor do I think 
you would have me if I could) ignore this fact on this 



occasion of our meeting as brothers trained and nur- 
tured here. I should contradict my own impulses, and 
I think I should fail of your sympathy, if I should 
propose to make our meeting one of mere literary 
recreation, and aim at nothing more than to contrib- 
ute to the elegant entertainment of the hour. This is 
no time 

" To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, 
Or play with the tangles of Nerea's hair." 

Inter arma silent leges — the din of arms drowns 
even the sacred voice of law, much more the notes of 
Arcadian pipes breathing festive strains and the song 
of shepherd's love : the harp of the muses, to be heard, 
must be swept to martial strains, such as of old Tyrtaeus 
poured forth — the war song and the battle march — in- 
spuing heroic Spartans to fight and die for the defence 
of their Eunomia^ the " good constitution " of their 
native land. I cannot strike such strains. Mine is not 
the tuneful power to sing either of peace or of war. 
But I shall attempt in plain prose to speak of some 
things Avhich the times suggest to us as scholars, 
as thinkers, as representatives of the liberal culture of 
the nation, who as such have duties in regard to the 
education of the national mind ; and among these things 
first of this : the importance for our country of what I 
may call a patriotic education ; by which I mean the 
direction of all the influences which go to mould the 
character of the young — school instruction and all other 
forming influences — to the cultivation of the spirit of 
nationality, loyalty, love of country, unselfish devotion 
to the public good — in a word, patriotism. 



1 

/ 

( Patriotism has its root among tlie elementary affec- 
tions, in the social sympathies of our nature. It is a 
sentiment — something in the heart, not resting in calcu- 
lations of private advantage, nor deduced from abstract 
regards of any sort, but springing up of itself in every 
generous and unperverted soul. It is a sympathy, 
which, twined with a thousand associations, makes a 
man feel that his individual life is bound up with his 
country's life, its whole life, past, present, and future.^ 
As between a man and his country it is what religion is 
between a man and his God, what the parental and 
filial affections are between parents and children — a 
bond of union ; and like all the noble and true human 
affections, it is disinterested, it is a bond that cannot be 
wrought and twined out of any considerations of self- 
interest, nor even of public utility. It is fraught in- 
deed with all manner of beautiful and benignant utili- 
ties, indispensable to the safety and defence, the highest 
welfare and noblest life of a nation ; just as the home 
affections are fruitful of blessings to those who are con- 
nected by the ties of home ; but in neither case are 
you to look for the origin of the affections in the utili- 
ties that flow from them. This is preposterous — putting 
the wrong thing foremost. The form and beauty, the 
flower and fruit of the tree spring from the root, not 
the root from them. There must be first the love 
or else not the advantages of love ; and love of coun- 
try, like all other love, must be a pure unselfish senti- 
ment, or it is not love, and cannot bear the fruits of 
love. 

Nor can patriotism, as a sentiment, be construed as 
a mere sense of duty, any more than it can be resolved 



8 

into self-interest or regards of general advantage. It 
may, like all the better sentiments of our nature, enter 
into the sphere of reason and conscience, l^e taken into 
union with the sense of duty, giving to it warmth, and 
deriving from it exaltation and support : the sense of 
duty being made more living by love, and the love 
made more firm by the imperial voice of duty. This 
LS so with all duties : love is a living energy that ani- 
mates the doing of them, helps the better to do them, 
makes it pleasant to do them. It is a cold, hard, dreary 
thiD<2: to do the duties of love without the heart of love. 
It is our duty to give our life, if need be, for the defence 
of our country, to give our life for the life and welfare 
of unborn generations ; but how much easier the duty, 
and more surely done, if the heart be in tlie conscience 
and in the will, — if, besides the sense of duty, there be 
a love stronger than death ! Out of this only comes it 
that we can say and feel its truth : 

Dulce ct decorum pro patria mori. 

Xothinj? but love can make it a sweet and beautiful 
thing to die for others. Out of this only come the 
heroisms that make the glory of history and attest the 
nobleness of which human nature, by God's inspiration, 
is capable. Of which take the case of that Frenchman, 
the Chevalier D'Assas, colonel of the regiment of Au- 
vergne, commanding the outpost of the French army 
at Klostercamp near Gueldres, during the Seven Years^ 
War — who, going the rounds of the posts in the gray 
of tlie morning of Oct. 15, 1T60, fell in with a division 
of the enemy that had been advancing under cover of 
the niglit, and was just ready to fall on the slumbering 



French. He was immediately seized and threatened 
witli instant death if he uttered a cry of ahirm. To be 
silent was the destruction of the French army. With- 
out a moment's hesitation, summoning all his stren«-th, 
he shouted out : "^w moi^ Auvergne! " " Hither Au- 
vergne, the enemy's at hand ! " and the next moment 
fell dead, pierced through the heart by the weapons 
j^ointed at his breast. But he gained his object. The 
warning was timely, and the attack was repulsed. 

Such is the noble spontaneousness of patriotic love. 
And if I have dwelt upon this point somewhat at length, 
it is because, it is upon the depth and strength of this 
sentiment, pervading the heart of a people, that the true 
prosperity and highest welfare of a nation always, and 
the very salvation of its freedom and national existence 
sometimes, depend. It prompts to deeds and services 
and sacrifices and sufferings which the impulses of self- 
interest not only never prompt to, but oj^pose, and 
which the clearest convictions of duty cannot, through 
the weakness of the human will, always make sure. 
Nothing but love can overcome the impulses of selfish- 
ness, or always make the will strong to ol^ey the voice 
of duty. 

The true patriotic spirit, I need hardly say, is 
heaven-wide from that mere national tonceit, vain-glori- 
ousness and pride, which is nothing but national ego- 
tism — which may be intense indeed, as among the old 
Greeks and Komans, but is, at the same time, illib- 
eral and exclusive, and the more intense, the more illib- 
eral and exclusive — making the word stranger synony- 
mous with enemy, and impairing the sense of justice 
towards other nations. On the contrary, true patriot- 



10 

ism is tliat noble sentiment of nationality, loyalty, and 
unselfish devotion to tlie good of one's own country, 
which is perfectly compatible not only with justice but 
with hearty good will towards other nations, and with 
the largest feeling of the universal brotherhood of the 
human race. 

But patriotism, like every other generous sentiment 
of our nature, needs cultivation. And to whom does it 
eminently belong to feed the sacred fire, and to keep it 
alive and glowing, pure and bright in the great heart 
of the nation ? To whom, but to the educated class, 
whose superior culture makes them, of right and of duty, 
the " shepherds of the people." 

The people of this country should be hr ought up to 
be patriots. This should be one of the ends aimed at 
in the training of the young , from childhood upwards. 
It should be one of the objects kept in view in all school 
instruction throughout the country. It should enter 
especially into our system of higher instruction. For 
what end are our colleges and universities ? For intel- 
lectual training, liberal learning, and refined culture — 
we say. Undoubtedly they are for this — but not mere- 
ly for this : for this in itself is an end without an end. 
The true end and worthy purpose of all training and 
culture, all knowledge and accomplishment, is to fit men 
for life and its duties, and especially for those good of- 
fices which society has a right to expect from those who 
have the best intellectual training and the highest cul- 
ture. A certain number of them may indeed, in the 
still air of secluded studies, devote themselves mainly to 
the advancement of science and knowledge, to specula- 



11 

tion, discovery, invention, and production in the intel- 
lectual spliere. But the calling of the great majority 
of them is practical — the magnanimous discharge of 
those public duties on which the maintenance and well- 
being of the commonwealth depend, and the exercise 
of that influence which rightfully belongs to them as 
guides and leaders of the people, forming and directing 
public opinion and the practical action of their coun- 
trymen. 

To fulfil this high calling to the honor and advan- 
tage of their country, something more than a mere 
classical, mathematical, and logical education, something 
more than mere intellectual training and culture, is ne- 
cessary : moral training, moral culture is indispensable. 
This our colleges should supply. It ought to be a fact 
put beyond question, that the youth of the nation nur- 
tured in them, are brought under influences which make 
it reasonably certain that they will be imbued with 
sound moral principles, that the seeds of magnanimity 
and public virtue will be planted in their minds. It 
ought to be a well understood and undoubted thing 
that in all these institutions sound instruction in morals 
generally, and in political ethics and the constitutional 
principles of our Government in particular, is dispensed 
by the most competent men that can be found. The 
oflS.ce of giving it — as it is of the very highest impor- 
tance — so it should be considered one of the most digni- 
fied and honorable in the land. It is a trust that should 
be confided only to men of the highest order of mind 
and the largest possible measure of that enthusiasm, 
force of character, and peculiar gift of influence over 
other minds, which go to make the great true teacher — 



12 

one who vivifies what he expounds, making it enter, 
not as dry dead formulas, but as a life and living power 
into the minds of the young, and so forms them into 
true and worthy men, of magnanimous spirit, fit for all 
the duties which God and their country may call them 
to, when they go from the schools into life and the 
world. 

This earnest cultivation of the patriotic spirit is for 
us the more indispensable both from the absence of cer- 
tain favorable conditions, and the working of certain 
causes that are j)ositively unfavorable to its growth. 

In the first place, our population is not homogeneous. 
It is made up from dijfferent nations. There is not as 
yet one universal mother tongue for all the people of 
the land. We have indeed a common national language, 
but that is not exclusively ours : it is the English 
tongue. 

Then, again, we have no proper national name. We 
cannot call ourselves Americans in any distinguishing 
way ; for the Canadians, the Mexicans, the Brazilians 
are equally Americans — though they all have what we 
have not, a distinguishing name for their respective 
countries. We sometimes call our country Columbia. 
That is only poetical usage ; but it shows the instinc- 
tive feeling of the want of a distinguishing national 
name. Our official designation is the United States of 
America. It is a great pity we have not a better one. 
It distracts and perplexes the idea of national oneness. 
It fosters the notion of independent separateness which 
is the very thing the people intended to destroy, when 
they abrogated the old Articles of Confederation and 



13 

established the new Constitution. It is a pity they did 
not then fix upon some single national name — Columbia 
Alleghania, or whatever other might have been thought 
appropriate. 

We are indeed one nation in the theory of the Con- 
stitution. This is put beyond all doubt by the instru- 
ment itself — by its preamble, by its provisions expressly 
vesting in the Union, and prohibiting to the States as 
such, every attribute and function of sovereignty, and 
by its palmary declaration of the supremacy of the 
Constitution and laws of the Union over all State con- 
stitutions and laws. But the very name — Constitution 
of the United States — suggests feelings which some- 
times make an argument from its terms needful ; whereas 
if the style of it had been the Constitution of the peo2:»le 
of Columbia, the name itself would have always pre- 
sented us to ourselves and to the world as a nation one 
and indivisible — would have carried home to the feel- 
ings what the language of the instrument makes clear 
to the understanding. It would have gone far to pre- 
vent, if not rather effectually to preclude those notions 
of State rights and State sovereignty in which the doc- 
trine of secession now finds its pretext — Eome was al- 
ways and everywhere E-ome._ Rome when she was 
founded on the seven hills — Rome when she absorbed 
the states of Italy — Rome when she had annexed the 
world — and made the word Homan citizen a word of 
pride in the lips of all that could pronounce it wherever 
they might go. Such things are not without im])or- 
tance. A word, a name, often exerts a powerful influ- 
ence on the education of a people ; and it is certain 
that the sense of national oneness and the sentiment of 



14 

loyalty and love of country are fostered by a common 
origin, a common language, and a national name. 

Now as to what is positively bad in its effects. It 
is not to be denied that in tlie actual working of our 
political system — and especially in the business of quad- 
rennial President-making, with its hot contests of rival 
parties and stuj)endous scramble for offices and jobs, 
there are influences constantly operating on the whole 
mass of the people which tend more powerfully to de- 
moralize the nation than any that can be found in the 
working of any other political system on the globe. I 
say this advisedly as to every word I use, because I be- 
lieve it is undeniably true, and because it is equally un- 
deniable that whatever goes to corrupt the morals of a 
nation goes to corrupt the sources of its patriotism. 

But Slavery — I trust I may be permitted to refer to 
this subject without violating that propriety which, on 
occasions like this, forbids the introduction of topics on 
which radical differences of opinion and feeling may be 
presumed to exist. May I not take it for granted that 
to-day I run no risk of giving offence by saying what 
the line of thought I am pursuing leads me to say on 
the influence of Slavery on patriotism ? I shall venture 
so to presume, and therefore frankly express my own 
thoughts — Slavery, I say, then, more than any thing 
else, has debauched the moral sense of the people of the 
Southern States and corrupted the springs of loyal patri- 
otic national feeling there — not without mischievous- 
effect too, to a considerable extent, upon the Northern 
mind. Look how it has worked. 

The fathers of the republic, South as well as North, 



15 

tliouglit it a curse and a shame; their Southern sons 
hold it for a blessing and a glory ; 

The fathers regarded it as repugnant to the princi- 
j)les of natural justice, and did not dream of defending 
it on that ground ; their sons uphold it as sanctioned by 
God and the Gospel ; 

The fathers hoped it would be gradually restricted 
and ultimately extinguished ; their sons are resolved to 
l^erpetuate and extend it, and are now in arms for the 
overthrow of the Union and the establishment of a 
great slave empire that shall ultimately embrace all 
Mexico and Central America. 

What a prodigious change of sentiment is this ! 
And in how comparatively short a period it has been 
wrought. — ^The time is not so far back as not to be 
within the memory of many of you, when John Ran- 
dolph spoke only the general feeling of the most en- 
lightened Southern men, in his reply to that Northern 
member of Congress who had meanly thought to curry 
Southern favor by expressing his approbation of slavery : 
" Mr. Speaker," said he, extending his long arm and point- 
ing his long skinny finger at the cowering " doughface " 
— his shrill voice and sallow face full of the intensest 
scorn — " Mr. Speaker, I envy neither the head, nor 
the heart of the Northern man who rises here to defend 
slavery on principle." The doughface shrunk into him- 
self abashed at the withering rebuke. But Mr. Ran- 
dolph, I say, spoke only the general feeling of respectable 
Southern men at that time. It is not quite thirty years 
ago since slavery was denounced as an economical, social, 
and moral evil by the leading men of Virginia, and its 
abolition earnestly urged, and almost carried in the 



16 

Conventiou of tliat State — only one vote more being 
needed, I believe, to carry it. 

What lias wrouglit this great change of opinion ? 
Mercenary considerations — suddenly enhanced profits 
on cotton-growing in the Lower Slave states, and a cor- 
responding sudden enhancement of profits on slave- 
breeding in the Upper ones. Here began the change 
of moral opinion on slavery M'"hich we have seen. Men 
always try to find moral and religious grounds to justify 
what selfish interests determine them to do, and will 
bend and force the Word of God Himself into sanctioning 
what the spontaneous dictates of reason and conscience 
pronounce to be contrary to the plainest principles of 
natural right : just as if such a procedure (supposing 
their inter23retation correct) could have any other le- 
gitimate efifect than to destroy the claims of an}^ pre- 
tended Divine revelation. — Show me a revelation that 
contradicts the necessary convictions of reason and 
conscience — and I reject it. Show me a revelation that 
says the mere right of the strongest is, in itself, a moral 
right — a revelation that says that difference of color, of 
race, of intellectual endowment and capacity for civili- 
zation and self-elevation, is God's sanction for the strong- 
er race to dras: the weaker from their native seats and 
make them tools and chattels — and I reject it as quickly 
as I would a pretended revelation that should declare 
two and two to be eight, or that the three angles of a 
triangle are not equal to two right angles. The South- 
ern Gospel puts God in contradiction with himself. I 
thank God for the conviction I have that it is a false 
Gospel. The Gospel of Christ does indeed tell us that 
not all wrongs are to be redressed in any way, no matter 



17 

what tlie consequences — it is not, in my opinion, a Gar- 
Hsonian Abolitionist Gospel. It does indeed preach 
the duties that may mutually pertain to the parties to a 
false abnormal relation while that relation exists. It 
does indeed preach submission, patience, endurance un- 
der many a wrong, and the spirit of justice and charity 
•under all wrongs. But it never preaches that therefore 
wrong is right : yet this is the preaching that has been 
going on for thirty years at the South, every year more 
and more boldly proclaimed — until the moral sense of 
the present generation there is completely debauched. 

Nor has the debauching influence been confined to 
the South. Through the interests of party politics and 
the immense commercial interests the growth of slavery 
has created, it has spread quite considerably at the 
North ; and within the last half dozen years, especially, 
we have heard the Southern Gospel zealously pro- 
claimed among us — in pulpits, on platforms, and by the 
press — in sermons, speeches, and articles — \)j editors, 
political harauguers and divines, in a fashion that a 
man would have been thought crazy to have predicted 
thirty years ago, or twenty years ago. — I think this sort 
of jireaching is at an end here now. I do not Ijelieve 
we shall have much more of it at the North. I think 
we are all now pretty well agreed as to the influence of 
slavery on the character of a people — what sort of chiv^- 
alry, honor and honesty, for instance, it produces. AVc 
shall need have a new dictionary to define the Southern 
meaning of the words: the cldvalry that drives harm- 
less women from their homes and confiscates the petti- 
coats left behind in the hurried flight ; the honor that 
makes army and navy ofificers hold their places and 
2 



18 

draw their pay as long as they can by secret treachery 
injure the Government, for whose defence they were 
nurtured and sworn and honored and trusted and paid, 
and then go over openly to war against it ; the honesty 
that steals and robs under trust and glories in the rob- 
bery and theft. — It is a pretty good commentary on the 
tone of moral sentiment engendered by slavery, when , 
Floyd and Cobb and Twiggs and Lee and men of that 
stamp are held in respect and crowned with applause. 

I presume, too, we have all arrived at a pretty clear 
conviction as to the quality of patriotism fostered by 
slavery, and need no more instruction to convince us 
that slave-holding institutions are as perfectly compati- 
ble with a real love for republican freedom and a true 
loyalty to a republican government like ours, as the 
worship of God and Mammon. — ^There can indeed be 
no true loyalty, no genuine reverence for law, where 
all men have not equal rights — ^I do not speak of polit- 
ical rights but equal personal rights — before the law. It 
is supplanted by the barbarous law of wilfulness and 
brute violence. There can be no true freedom even for 
the free, — no security for the dearest rights of freemen, 
— ^freedom of the press, freedom of suffrage, freedom of 
speech, freedom of thought. Slave-holding institutions 
are hostile to them all. Their spirit is essentially a 
spirit of oligarchic tyranny. Its tendency is inevitably 
to despotism and a military rule. This all philosophy 
and all history teach. But we have been slow to learn 
the lesson. 

Seventy-two years ago, "William Pinkney, the great 
statesman and orator of Maryland, thus warned the peo- 
ple : " That the dangerous consequences of the system 



19 

of bondage," said he, " have not yet been felt does not 
prove that they never will be. ... To me nothing 
for which I have not the evidence of my senses is more 
clear than that it will one day destroy tliat reverence for 
liberty which is the vital jyrinciijle of a repuUic. While 
a majority of yonr citizens are accustomed to rule with 
the authority of despots within particular limits, while 
your youth are reared in the habit of thinking that the 
great rights of human nature are not so sacred but they 
may with innocence be trampled on, can it be expected 
that the public mind should glow with that gener- 
ous ardor in the cause of freedom which can alone save 
a government like ours from the lurlcing demon of usur- 
pation ? . . . For my own part, I have no hope 
that the stream of general liberty will flow forever un- 
polluted through the mire of partial bondage, or that 
they who have been habituated to lord it over others 
will not in time be base enough to let others lord it 
over them. If they resist it will be the struggle of 
pride and selfishness, not of principle."'" — So spoke 
William Pinkney seventy- two years ago. The wisdom 
of the warning, the truth of the prediction, we see in 
the events we are in the midst of now. 

The revolt. of the Southern States has been accom- 
plished by a band of conspirators possessing themselves 
of arms and of the machinery of State action. It was 
precipitated by trickery and fraud, by despotism and 
terror — in some cases, without even the show of submit- 

* " I am indebted for this passage from Mr. Pinkney's speech 
to the noble and admirable Address of Mr. Jonx Jay, delivered 
at Mount Cisco, New York, on the Fourth of July last, on " The 
Great Conspiracy and England's Neutrality." 



20 

ting tlie question to tlie suffi*ages of the people, and in 
no case with a free, fair, full expression of the popular 
mind by ballot or by voice. The insurrectionary gov- 
ernment organized by the conspirators, is nothing more 
*than a usurpation^ such as Mr. Pinkney foretold ; and 
in spite of its republican forms, it is really nothing at 
bottom but a military despotism^ to which the Southern 
people, willingly or unwillingly, are forced to submit. 

Let us clearly understand the nature of this war. It 
is not a war, on the part of the insurgents, merely for 
the establishment of the doctrine of secession, or for the 
conquest of a separate independent government ; nor on 
our part, merely for the overthrow of that doctrine, or 
for the preservation of the integrity of the national do- 
main. These are both indeed issues that are to be de- 
cided by it. Bat it has a far deeper significance — a sig- 
nificance that invests it with a solemn historical impor- 
tance not surpassed by that of any war ever waged since 
modern civilization began its march over the world. 

It is at bottom a war between two antagonistic and 
irreconcileable systems of social order — the one founded 
on the old Declaration of Independence of 1776, the 
other on the denial of it. When that Declaration j)ro- 
claimed that " all men are born free and equal " — are 
freemen, that is, by birthright, and entitled to equal 
rights before the law — not meaning thereby politi- 
cal rights, for these are not natural but prescrip- 
tive rights, but equal personal rights before the law ; 
that is, equal right to " life, liberty, and the pur- 
suit of happiness " — when, I say, that Declaration 
proclaimed this, it proclaimed a doctrine incompatible 
with any defence of slavery on principle. So the 



21 

fathers of tlie Republic, Soutli as well as North, un- 
derstood it then. So the Southern insurgents under- 
stand it now. The fathers did not justify slavery as 
riglit in principle ; but only excused it as an evil en- 
tailed upon them to be provisionally tolerated, and to 
be got rid of as soon as it could be well and wisely 
done : the Southern insurgents justify it as riglit in 
principle, and so they are driven by a strict logical neces- 
sity to contradict the doctrine of the Declaration of In- 
dependence. Mr. Stephens, the Vice-President of the 
insurgent confederacy, says it is a " pestilent lieresy." 
He does not, like many others, stupidly mistake or wil- 
fully pervert its meaning in order to deride it. He does 
not even call it (as Mr. Choate did) a " glittering gen- 
erality." He knows better. He knows that it is a suf- 
ficiently clear enunciation of a very intelligible doctrine 
— which may be denied as false, but cannot be derided 
as absurd. He therefore confronts it with a denial, and 
proposes to build up a new order of things on the con- 
tradiction of it : " The foundations of our new govern- 
ment," he says, " are laid, its corner-stone rests, in the 
great truth," that slavery is the natural and moral con- 
dition of the Negro race. " This, our new government," 
he adds, " is the first in the world based on this great, 
physical, philosophical, and moral truth ; " and, " with a 
government so founded," he declares " that the world 
would recognize in theirs the model nation of history." 
This is a war, then, for the overthrow of the old 
Declaration of Independence. That is its inmost mean- 
ing. It is a war that sooner or later was sure to come. 
The recognition of slavery in the Constitution of the 
Union — indirect as it was — and little as I am now dis- 



22 

posed to condemn tlie motives of its framers at tliat day 
— was still at variance with tlie Declaration of Independ- 
ence. No theoretical inconsistency but some day works 
practical mischief You cannot introduce contradictory 
elements into the bosom of any social organization 
without inaugurating an " irrepressible conflict." There 
is a logic of history that cannot l)e resisted. What has 
come to pass was inevitable. 

The two systems of social order, co-existing under 
one government, have gone on developing — the one in 
the North, the other in the South — ^until, on the one 
side, you see a society of twenty millions of people, 
every one with equal rights of person and property in 
the eye of law, every one equally protected in " life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;" and on the 
other side, a society of ten millions, more than four mil- 
lions of whom are legally held as property, bought and 
sold, as cattle, sheep, or any other property are bought 
and sold, then- persons, and faculties of body and mind, 
controlled by their owners at their will, and for their 
ends. 

And now these two systems are face to face with 
each other, in open, deadly war. 

I said it was inevitably sure to come. Not that it 
need ever have come — ^so far as the North is concerned 
— if the South had been content with its constitutional 
pound (and it has had a great deal more than its con- 
stitutional pound) of slavery flesh. At the North, ex- 
periencing none of the evils that work inevitably in the 
bosom of a slaveholding society, and deriving from the 
Union many advantages, the great body of the people 
have been always, practically, not only contented to 



23 

leave the Soutli in tlie undisturbed enjoyment of its jDe- 
culiar institution and of those constitutional advantages 
in whicli it had, in many respects, much the best of the 
bargain ; but more than contented — they have been al- 
ways making concession after concession to its imperious 
demands, stretching the Constitution to the utmost, if not 
breaking it, in favor of slavery, and certainly (as every 
statesman knows) going ove?' it and beyond it in al- 
lowing the whole power of the Union to help aggran- 
dize it in extent and in political importance, by the 
purchase or conquest of immense territories to be 
brought in as new slave States. 

But the South has not been content with its orisrinal 
bargain, nor with all it has gained besides. It is not in 
the nature of the slaveholding power to be contented in 
the Union without controlling it. Its spirit is essen- 
tially aggressive. It brooks no superior. It demands 
submission from every thing with which it has to do. — 
This is why I said this war was inevitably sure to 
come. This is why it has come. 

Thirty years ago, the leading spirits at the South 
took the determination to get possession of the political 
power of the nation, through the help of whatever 
Northern votes they could bring to their side, and to 
control it for the aggrandizement and extension of sla- 
very, and to break up the Union whenever that posses- 
sion and control should pass from their hands. — Then 
began that systematic sowing of the seeds of disloyalty 
to the Union, and that systematic perversion of the 
sentiment of allegiance among all classes, and especially 
among the officers of the army and navy, which has 
lately displayed itself in treacheries and treasons such 



24 

as tlie liistoiy of tlie world shows nothing equal to for 
dishonor and baseness. 

From that day onward the Southern leaders have 
kept their clear persistent purpose. Gaining the politi* 
cal control of the Union, they wielded it for their own 
ends. The acquisition of Texas, the war with Mexico, 
the Fugitive Slave Law, the repeal of the Missouri com- 
promise, and the Dred Scott decision, all these were ac- 
complished in their interest. They failed indeed in the 
attempt to force slavery into Kansas ; but they had all 
the power and influence of the Administration on their 
side. The attempt was an atrocious crime ; but it was 
also what Talleyrand said is a great deal worse than a 
crime, it was an enormous political blunder. It awoke 
a spirit of determined resistance to slavery aggressions 
at the North. 

On the 6th of November last the conspirators saw 
that their hour had come. The sceptre of power was 
about to pass from their hands. But for six months 
more they would be in possession of the Administration 
— with a pliant tool at the head of it (whether more an 
imbecile or more a traitor, history will decide) — with 
accomplices in the Treasury, War, and Navy depart- 
ments : Cohh robbing the treasury of millions, dispos- 
ing the public moneys for the convenient grasp of the 
consj^irators, and planning to reduce the Government to 
bankruptcy ; Floyd sending South all the national 
arms and munitions of war, and putting all the South- 
ern forts, arsenals, and public property in the best con- 
dition for them to seize ; with Toucey keeping our navy 
at the ends of the world, and doing nothing, and urging 
nothing to be done, in his department which, with his 



25 

knowledge, lie knew tke defence of the country required 
to be done and urged. 

Tlieu came secession, and secession — in some cases, 
preceded, in otliers followed, by tlie seizure of forts, and 
arsenals, and custom-houses, public moneys, and vessels 
— until seven States had been declared out of the 
Union ; the Star of the West, with national troops on 
board, fired into, and the flag of the Union insulted ; 
the Administration looking on with traitorous or help- 
less inaction — ^while the rebel insurgents and their trai- 
torous sympathizers in every quarter were filling the 
land and confusing the public mind with the impudent 
cry of " no coercion ! " If observation and history had 
not taught us how prodigious often is the delusive force 
of the perpetual reiteration of j)lirases and watchwords 
over unreflecting minds, one would stand amazed at the 
effrontery that could utter, and the stupidity that could 
be deluded by, any thing so unspeakably absurd as this 
cry of " no coercion " raised in behalf of those who were 
engaged in such acts of theft, robl^ery, treason, and war 
against the nation. The highwayman's protest against 
any outcry of alann from you when he is clutching your 
throat, or the burglar's protest against any defensive 
violence on your part when he is Ijreaking into your 
house, are incomparably less impudent and more enti- 
tled to respect. 

Such was the state of the country when President 
Lincoln came into power. Whether or not it was any 
part of the conspiracy that he should be assassinated, at 
any time before or after his advent, may never perhaps 
be known. There are those who believe it was. 



26 

But lie came into office : witli an army and navy 
weakened by tlie desertion of many of the officers, and 
not well knowing wlio and liow many of tliose that re- 
mained were to be trusted ; witli traitors in every de- 
partment of tke public service — in every bureau, every 
room, and almost at every desk ; without arms ; with 
an empty treasury ; witli tlie Border States urging 
" compromise " and threatening secession, backed by 
numerous journals and multitudes of men at the North 
openly proclaiming secession sympathies, and demand- 
ing compromising concessions ; the great body of the 
people hardly yet able to understand and believe what 
a crisis had come, and leaving it doubtful whether the 
Government would find a united North to suj^port it 
in a vigorous rej)ression of the conspiracy, even if the 
means of doing so were in its hands ; and all this time 
the insurgents, with defiant boldness, pushing on their 
preparations for war — erecting batteries, pointing can- 
non, gathering and drilling troops, getting down fi-om 
the North all the aiTQs and ammunition they could find 
mercenary traitors willing to supply them "svith ; yet 
still shouting the cry of " no coercion " — a cry still 
joined in by the Border States and still echoed by 
many a Northern voice ! 

Thus stood things until the tJiirteenth of Ap7'il, 
when Fort Sumter fell, and on both sides the war 
began. 

I need not recite what has followed since. It is all 
fresh in your minds : — the call of the President — the up- 
rising of the nation — the three hundred thousand men 
on foot, all volunteers — the meeting of Congress — the 
five hundred thousand men and the five hundred mil- 



27 

lions of dollars voted for the defence of the Union. You 
know it all — what successes have crowned our arms ; and 
what reverses we have sustained, enough to sadden, but 
not enough to cast us down — not enough to make us 
bate one jot of heart or hope of the final triumph of the 
righteous cause. No. No. Had the rout of the Union 
forces at Manassas been ten times more terrible than 
that of the Romans at Cannae, the spirit of the nation 
would, I am sure, rise to an equal height of heroic 
resolution. 

A Civil War is a great calamity ; but great as it is, 
it is not the greatest calamity that can befall a nation. 
Moral degeneracy, corruption, and rottenness are worse ; 
and a civil war, notwithstanding its inevitable miseries, 
and the moral evils inevitably incident to it, may, un- 
der God's Providence, be sometimes the only effectual 
means to preserve a nation from the dissolution and 
downfiill which come ever in the sequel of a certain 
stage of moral corruption and decay. 

I presume not to penetrate the counsels of the Most 
High in this war. But I see it has already wrought a 
great deliverance for us, worth more than all the treas- 
ure and blood it has yet cost or is likely to cost. "The 
whole life of this nation turns on the problem of con- 
verting four and sixpence to a dollar," said Albert Gal- 
latin thirty years ago.'^ This was too true then, and it 
has beeft a great deal more true since then. But it is 
not true to-day. The cannonade of Fort Sumter evoked 
a nobler spirit, and substituted a higher problem. How 

* " Shall I not be avenged on such a people as this ? Saith tho 
Lord," was old John Quincy Adams's remark in reply. 



28 

electrical its effect ! It broke the suffocating spell 
of cottou and politics — tlie lust of gold and the greed 
of office. It emancipated the mind of the North from 
the thraldom to mere material interests, and lifted 
it up into the higher region of ideas, of invisible prin- 
ciples. It united the hearts of twenty millions of peo- 
ple as the heart of one man — made them see and feel 
that there is something greater than gold, more essential 
to a nation's life than trade, more sacred than the Gos- 
pel of Cotton, — that the Flag of the Union is a symbol 
of spiritual interests grander, nobler, more inspiring 
than the interests of commerce and of parties — ^the great 
ideas of nationality, government, law, and loyalty ; and 
for that Flag and for the ideas it represents made them 
ready to pour out all their treasure and to shed all their 
blood. Whatever be the end of the war, it is a great 
thing that it has thus united the hearts and exalted the 
spirit of twenty millions of people. History shows 
nothing grander than this outburst of loyal enthusiasm. 
I trust in God this wickedest of all traitorous conspira- 
cies is destined to be overwhelmed with defeat and dis- 
grace. I humbly confide in Him to give the victory to 
the great righteous cause. 

But to make this sure, there must needs be on our 
part something more than a mere outburst of popular 
enthusiasm. The spirit which the cannonade of Fort 
Sumter made go like lightning through every loyal 
heart, must settle into the calm inflexible deterftiination 
to endure, if need be, any extremity of sacrifice and 
suffering in the discharge of the great obligations which 
this crisis imposes on us. Our country is on trial of its 
patriotism for the first time since 177G. We have had 



29 

since then but little to try and nothing to test tlie depth 
and strength of the patriotic spirit. — The day of trial 
has come. The events of the last six mouths have 
rudely dispelled all old illusions, and brought us face 
to face with the fact that our institutions must, under 
God, find their security in ourselves, not we ours in 
them. The question now is not about our institutions 
sustaining us, but about our ability to defend them : 
and this is a question not of physical resources, (for of 
them there is plenty,) nor of military skill and bravery 
on the battle-field, (for there is and will be enough of 
this,) but a question of the moral spirit of the nation — 
of the firmness and constancy of patriotic principle and 
purpose in the mind and heart of the nation, based in 
clear convictions, and a j)rofound sense of the duty which 
rests upon us of maintaining the supremacy of the Na- 
tional Government and thereby the foundations of all 
government, all social order, and all true human progress. 
Do the people see and feel their obligation never to lay 
down their arms until this Slaveliolderi^ Rebellion^ with 
its anarchical doctrine of Secession and the monstrous 
principle of government put forward by Mr. Stephens, 
is overwhelmed, crushed, and reduced to unconditional 
submission ? Do they see and feel that all talk of 
"peace" short of this is of the nature of treason, not 
only to the country, but to the most sacred interests of 
the human race ? Do they thus see and feel ? And 
will they continue thus to see and feel — pledging, like 
the old fathers, their lives, their fortunes, and their 
sacred honor on the issue ? I trust so. I think so. 
Uiere may he 'politicians loohing out for the future with 
mean^ selfish ambitions. There may be less of pure 



30 

self-denying patriotism among those who have the ad- 
ministration of affairs than there was in the old revolu- 
tionary struggle ; there may be more of corruption and 
profligacy in the expenditure of the public moneys ; but 
I think the great heart of the nation is right. The 
action of Congress is noble, is glorious — nothing in his- 
tory surpasses it. And the nation — I hope, I trust, I 
believe — the nation will sustain it to the end. I think 
the nation will rigidly insist that the Administration 
shall show itself thoroughly in earnest in the prosecu- 
tion of the war. No Administration can stand that in- 
curs the settled distrust of the people on this point. I 
think there is a profound determination on the part of 
the great body of the nation that the war shall be car- 
ried on and finished as soon as possible on ])urely mili- 
tary principles without any ulterior political regards. 
Crush the rebellion by arms first, and let political ad- 
justments be looked after when that is done. Negoti- 
ations with rebels in arms will not be tolerated. 

Last winter I thought that if the slaveholding 
States were deliberately determined to go out of the 
Union, and would do it peaceably and honestly, and 
wait until the thing could be legally accomplished, I 
w^ould be for letting them go. I thought we should in 
many respects be well rid of them; and that they 
would learn some salutary lessons from the experiment 
of setting up for themselves, and after a little be glad to 
come back and behave better in the Union. 

But I am of a different mind now. Events have 
shown a settled determination on the part of the con- 
spirators to effect a permanent division of the country. 
I see that the material interests of the nation demand 



31 

tlie preservation of tlie integrity of the national domain. 
These Southern States are geographically and politically 
necessary to us as a nation. Those most necessary to 
round out and complete the national area are ours l)y 
every claim. "VVe have bought them, and paid for 
them, and fought for them, and bled for them. What 
with purchase money paid — what with fortifications 
and defences built — what with driving the natives out 
and the war waged with Mexico, they have cost us mil- 
lions of treasure and thousands of lives. If the " rio-ht 
of secession " for any of the original thirteen members 
of the Union be (as it is) an absurd claim, it is for 
these newer States too monstrously absurd to deserve a 
moment's regard. They belong to us by every title. 
They are ours of right — om's as a necessary possession — 
and we must keep them. It would never do to have 
an independent slave empire on our Southern frontier 
in possession of the Mexican gulf and of the outlet of 
the great rivers of the West. It would be a perpetual 
source of irritation, conflict, and war. The two great 
conflicting systems of social order could never live 
peaceably side by side. And even if they could, the 
cause of Christian civilization, and the great interests 
of human progress, forbid us ever to consent to the dis- 
memberment of the national domain in order to estab- 
lish a great empire based upon the contradiction of the 
Declaration of Independence. 

We have, it seems to me, no election. The rebellion 
must be crushed. Nothing short of this will do. 

And as to the fate of slavery in the sequel of the 
-vvar — ^we must leave it to the future. Opposed as I 
am in my inmost soul ta slavery, and delighted as I 



32 

should be to see tlie Constitution purged of every re- 
cognition and guaranty to it and brought back to per- 
fect harmony with the doctrine of the Declaration of In- 
dej)eudence, and believing, as I do, that this v\^ill some 
day be done ; rejoiced as I should be at the entire ex- 
tinction of slavery throughout the land, and confident 
as I am that it will some day be accomplished, I have 
never been willing to incui' the responsibility of advo- 
cating the immediate emancipation of the slaves in mass 
— especially in the lower States, where the slave popu- 
lation is so dense. I have indeed been in the habit 
heretofore of thinking, and on more than one public 
occasion have declared the conviction, that immediate 
emancipation would be no mercy to the slaves and a 
great curse to the country. But I confess to a less de- 
cided opinion now. I do not know that the slaves 
would be any better off at first. But I have less appre- 
hension of results disastrous to social order and secu- 
rity than I formerly entertained. Manumission worked 
peacefully in St. Domingo for seven years ; and it was 
not until the attempt made by Napoleon after that time 
to reduce the blacks again to slavery, that those scenes 
of bloody horror were enacted which have been so often 
held up to alarm and to warn. Emancipation worked 
peacefully in the British "West India islands. It might 
work so here. Still the future of slavery in this coun- 
try is to me a problem dark and difficult of solution. 
But time makes many darh tilings dear — and often in a 
wonderfully short and decisive way. I am more and 
more every year impressed with this truth. 

The theory on which our Government is carrying on 
this war insures the constit^ional rights of all slave* 



33 

holders wlio are loyal to the Union. But what claim 
to such j)rotection have rebels in arms to overthrow the 
Constitution? Is it due in justice ? or in sound policy? 
In neither, as I think. I am of opinion that the time 
may come when not only sound policy, but the stern 
necessities of war — in the military occupation of the 
Border States — will compel the proclamation of freedom 
to the slaves of rebel and traitor masters. This will be 
putting the axe to the root of the tree. It will hasten 
the extinction of slavery in those States — a consumma- 
tion sure indeed to come at no distant day from the 
operation of other causes economical and social. What 
in the sequel will come in the Lower States, God only 
can foresee ; — what may come, it makes one shudder to 
forecast, unless the power of the Union be interposed to 
protect the lives of those who are seeking to destroy 
the Union. On the whole, I am inclined to think that 
the end of this war will in some way be the end, or the 
beginning of the end, of slavery. But whether so or 
not, I am sure that the Most High, whose Providence is 
the genius of human history, will in some wise way dis- 
pose of this, as of every other great question, according 
to His plans in the conduct of human affairs. 

Meantune let us be true to our God and to our 
country, true to the great cause of justice and of human 
rights. Let us not be cast down by the reverses we 
have sustained. Let us rather profit by our disasters. 
We have been too proud and boastful in our confi- 
dence. It may do us a great deal of good to learn at 
the outset of the war the lessons our reverses should 
teach. Let us learn them ; and let us be roused to a 
firmer courage to maintain the great cause amidst all 
3 



34 

sacrifices and all sufferino-s. Our fatliers fouirlit for 
seven years to establisli the Declaration of Independ- 
ence ; and sliame to us if we are not willins" to fisflit, 
if need be, for seven times seven years to prevent its 
overthrow. They were three millions all told ; we are 
twenty. They were poor ; we are rich. They fought 
against fearful odds ; we have the odds on our side- 
We figlit for more than they fought for. If we are true 
to our duty, our triumph is sure. If we fail, it will be 
because we are basely recreant ; and we shall incur, as 
we shall deserve, the scorn and execration of all noble 
spirits as long as the ages roll. Shall we then suc- 
cumb ? No, never — I trust in God, never. 

We have appealed to the God of Battles. The ap- 
peal has been forced upon us. After a forbearance un- 
paralleled in history, we have accepted the issue so 
wickedly forced upon us. In the face of the world, in 
the sight of the universe, we have made our appeal to 
the God of Battles ; and we must never withdraw that 
appeal as long as He gives us a pulse to feel, or an arm 
to strike for the sacred cause of truth and right. We 
fight not for ourselves alone, not for this generation 
alone, but for our posterity, for unborn ages, for every 
thing dear and sacred in the great futui-e of our country 
and of the human race. Let us then maintain the 
conflict until the "Star-Spangled Banner" shall again 
float over the land from Maine to Texas, and from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific — and with the exalted trust that 
it will to the end of time float over a country one and 
indivisible, a country that shall forever be 

" The home of the free and the land of the brave." 



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